Is Kung Fu Panda 4 Necessary?

as much as DreamWorks very nature when it comes to making movies is throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks I'd say they've been on a roll recently okay ignore that and what better way to keep that momentum going than with a brand new installment in one of their most beloved and iconic franchises I hope Kung Fu Panda doesn't require an introduction I can never be sure of the age range for people who watch my videos these days but Kung Fu Panda to this day is still one of dream work's most iconic and beloved franchises for its incredible art dire animation creative and downright breathtaking fight scenes and it manages to be funny while having an emotional maturity to it that elevates the otherwise familiar story lines even if the internet has largely ruined Kung Fu Panda 2o for me whoever holds this long stick is gay what what what and you'll usually get many people debating on the best animated Trilogy of all time or even the best film Trilogy of all time and Kung Fu Panda will frequently be brought up in those discussions it's just that good the franchise ended back in 2016 with Kung Fu Panda fre neatly wrapping up the trilogies character arcs and story while people tend to agree that free wasn't as good as the previous two it's still a solid and satisfying conclusion or things considered and to this day I am still shocked to how proficient DreamWorks are at making sequels this good for the vast majority of Studios a sequel is often the mark of an easy cash grab as much as they want to tell you that it isn't Incredibles 2 was mid and I am still unhappy about it but one thing many have caught on to is that DreamWorks are pretty outlandishly good at making sequels to the point where many agree that pretty much every sequel they've ever made has been better than the original or at least expanded on it in some meaningful ways how to train your dragon is one of my favorite trilogies of all time and the second movie is an honest Contender for my favorite movie ever even sequels to films of theirs that aren't exactly great have turned out to be some of the Studio's best work of course sometimes that isn't the case but it can't be denied that DreamWorks are weirdly consistent when it comes to making incredible sequels compared to their contemporaries DreamWork sequels more often than not do more than enough to justify their existence beyond the need for more money which is why when it comes to Kung Fu Panda 4 a lots of people are living with the comfortable expectation that it'll at least be a good movie and I have to admit I do think it'll be a solid film but after finally watching the finished trailer and yes I said finished trailer all I find the new story interesting and the animation as always is fantastic I finally asked myself a question I don't think I've considered for a DreamWork sequel before is Kung Fu Panda 4 really necessary for the longest time Kung Fu Panda 4 was just one of those movies that everyone knew was in production but still didn't actually believe was a thing it was even harder to believe when earli this year someone just leaked an unfinished version of the trailer into my Discord server causing hundreds of people to join grab it and proceed to spread it across social media DreamWorks lawyers this was not my fault I didn't ask for this this happened to me even when I was looking at all the unfinished animation and storyboard set to placeholder music by Drake for some reason I still didn't really believe the film existed not because I was completely against the idea just just completely but because given what was being offered by the film's plot in this trailer what they wanted to do with Po's character and the return of many of the franchise's previous villains and service of the new bad guy I personally wasn't convinced that there was any reason for Kung Fu Panda to not remain a Trilogy especially given it's been 7 years since the previous installment in the sense of finality that the third movie brought to the franchise I mean considering the planned six movies we were originally supposed to get seem to just disappear after free relased it seems strange for the franchise to get picked up again for a new installment after so long and that's what I want to talk about today is Kung Fu Panda 4 for a solid of a film that it may turn out to be really going to be necessary just how many Kung Fu Panda films are we going to get if this turns out to not be the last one and in an obsessed with sequels and reboots of established IPS is it okay to ask for just a little bit of closure every now and then let's discuss the actual trailer first I don't like this trailer in fact I think this is a bad trailer do not trace my location now this isn't anything new for Kung Fu Panda in fact the trailers for the first two films specifically are God awful choosing to focus on the comedy of the film and never taking anything about it seriously despite the action and serious moments being what makes the franchise so beloved so there's a lot here that I'm willing to chalk up to bad marketing but given we live in a futuristic Progressive Era where trailers for animated movies are finally tolerable It Doesn't Really spark much confidence when the trailer takes the epic music stops character s a funny then smash cut to a random scene of someone groaning like that Mario movie Green text especially when all of the jokes are severely unfunny and the trailer literally ends with a fart joke I know DreamWorks are capable of making trailers that properly sell their movies how to trainer Dragon free had a fantastic trailer so don't see what the issue is here anyway what else oh yeah Aquafina is in this movie I am getting sick of this woman she isn't everything although she seems to be giving a tolerable performance for once so we'll see how that plays out okay but on a serious note what really struck me about this trailer was of course the story where do you go after Kung Fu Panda free seemingly concluded the series and post Journey well I think they were struggling to come up with ideas themselves in an interview with Jeffrey kenberg in 2010 they stated they had actually planned out five more Kung Fu Pand offf movies after the first one how far those plans went when it comes to fleshing out their narratives and characters is anyone's guess but given the franchise reach natural conclusion with the third entry and then disappeared my guess is not very far to Kung Fu Panda's credit there's a lot of places you can take it and expand upon its world and characters but you can say that for a lot of properties that still found a natural conclusion and knew when to stop I should know that I'm a Gravity Falls fan that was really bad timing on my part I apologize so to go over the basic plot we've been given so far PO is retiring for being the Dragon Warrior to become the spiritual Master Of The Valley Of Peace and has the find successor allwell facing off against the new villain the chameleon who is taking the Kung Fu and appearances from the previous film's villains this sounds solid on its own but the devil is in the details The Vibes this movie is giving me so far is it's going through the motions and recycling a lot of ideas from previous films it feels weirdly by the books and not very creative the chameleon despite being call on paper is incredibly similar to Kai the main antagonist of the third movie Kai stole the chief of kung fu Masters and created copies of them the chameleon is Str up stealing the Kung Fu of previous villains and taking their appearances that's the only real difference between the two they're incredibly similar something to add is that Kai was made is the first Supernatural antagonist of the series because ta long had already taken the mantle as the brawler villain and Shen was the smarter one Kai being a supernatural villain was done to make him stand out but with the chameleon they're trying to go for something that's both smart and Supernatural and this wouldn't strike me as weird if they hadn't been deliberately making sure all of their villains stood out before with no overlap it really kind of sells how Kung Fu Panda free was a proper conclusion and that four was struggling to come up with new ideas especially when the villain they came up with is strikingly similar to the previous one also not a fan of how they're cly set this film up like it's a brand new finale after the one we already got by just pumping it full of fan service Mike Mitchell a director of four has said that Kung Fu Panda 4 brings back all of the characters all of them this not only includes the previous villains but also every character we can remember apparently never mind how this is going to potentially bloat the movie and lead to a lot of characters not being well utilized you'd usually reserve a move like this for a final installment right is this really going to be a final installment or are those other two movies going to happen after this kungu Panda free managed to be a satisfying conclusion without going all in on fan service also if you're bringing back every character you are going to make sure they're important to the plot right so far it seems like every important character besides Shifu has been sidelined and the film feels incredibly disconnected from the previous installments so now we have two problems there's the problem of this film potentially blowing its load and filling the film with a ton of Cameo appearances and fan servers for the sake of it and then there's the problem with the film's main plot being completely disconnected to the point where no one shows up in a role it's actually meaningful example the Furious 5 more like the Furious died where the are these guys yeah like confirmed to be in the film but they're clearly not playing a major part if the trailer is anything to go by as the films have progressed the five have slowly just become background characters of very little importance with the exception of Tigress and and here they look to be completely irrelevant what role do they play in this film exactly this one its own isn't too bad but it adds up to a lot of issues I have of what we've been shown so far like what this film means for Po's character while we obviously have to wait and see what this film is actually going to do I'm not very confident in what they're trying to do with po here the whole inner pece gaging is unfunny on its own and clearly put in the trailer to convince parents this is a funny movie to take your kids to watch but it 100% feels very wrong if you remember Kung Fu Panda 2 in any capacity Po's whole Arc in that film is about overcoming his childhood trauma the loss of his parents and the attempted genocide of his people by Lord Shen finding his own inner peace the finale of Kung Fu Panda 2 is incredibly well done and emotionally powerful Po's Arc is what made the finale so satisfying apart from just generally being cool as hell again the movie isn't out yet but this feels like an incredibly weird thing to make a joke about considering the weight behind po actually finding his inner peace there's also the question of just how much character development is left for po to experience without it feeling like the film is undoing any of what he's previously learned and how much he's matured from what we can gather from the trailer it looks like Po is having some sort of identity crisis and isn't taking the idea of retiring from being the Dragon Warrior very well so much so that he's struggling to find peace with himself and I'm sorry but what did po say at the end of the last movie am I the son of a panda the son of a goose a student a teacher turns out I'm all of them why has Po's character progression from free been completely thrown away po trying to find a new successor is a good idea for a story and there are plenty of places you can take this character to show how far he's come even though I would have preferred if he just left the series at free but this completely undermines Free's entire ending what the f Mike Mitchell has said the film is supposed to be a love letter to the first and that Po's bond with Zen this new character is supposed to draw parallels to how he is with Shifu which is an interesting angle to take but we've been shown very little about Po's inner conflict so far to actually has me fully invested in this idea I just don't feel this movie is going to push the series or Poe forward in any meaningful way the plot is incredibly simple so far and very derivative at the third movie especially when it comes to the villain just doing the same thing the previous villain did but instead taking the power from previous villains this time instead of the heroes they're clearly recycling ideas and struggling to come up with anything original and this is on top of them resurrecting this franchise in the first place after already had a perfectly sound conclusion again the movie isn't out yet and it can absolutely prove me wrong but given what I've seen in the finished and unfinished trailers I don't get the sense that this movie needed to exist and it feels a lot more uninspired than the previous free which brings me to the animation and art Direction the animation as expected looks great the lighting especially is fantastic but this is expected of DreamWorks I saw a lot of people get upset this movie isn't going in a more stylized Direction like P and Boots The Last Wish did but I really don't see this as a problem for Kung Fu Panda as these movies always have their own unique art Direction in atmosphere that they established using the Stell of Animation whereas person boots 1 didn't really have a visual identity at all and greatly benefited from going in a New Direction however something does feel slightly off of Kung Fu Panda 4's visuals obviously to say this is bad animation is just crazy talk but despite keeping aspects of the franchise's visual identity it also has some aspects that don't really fit like call these nitpix if you want but visually this film doesn't seem to be as consistent as the previous free specifically when it comes to the character designs if you've been browsing Twitter lately please just don't do that you may have seen a lot of people complaining about the character design of this wolf character named Zen they are new addition to the cast and represent a massive shift in the art Direction and character designs the character designs for the previous films were downright immaculate it embraced these blocky and sharper designs making good use of distinct shapes in the character's faces to create visually expressive designs that have an edge and a recognizable look and feel to them look at every member of the Furious 5 tyong Lord Shen heck just about every character in the previous films followed this design principle to a T and it helps give Kung Fu Panda its visual identity jumping forward to Kung Fu Panda 4 it's not just Zen but none of the new characters seem to follow this design philosophy Zen is probably the most egregious because they play such a huge role and look like they were ripped straight out of zotopia especially when her wanted posters have a much better design with more pronounced features and sharper shapes and this is only with the character designs while I do think the movie looks great the colors and shades are much brighter than the first three films and lack a lot of the ambience and atmosphere that they had in the Spades this in conjunction with the character designs has be pretty confident in saying I'm not a fan of this movie's art Direction so far it just feels incredibly safe and softer and likes the impact of the original fre films which to me is not a good sign when you consider how the narrative itself feels off too there's a pretty big shift in Direction with this film it feels a lot safer far more tame and uninspired both visually and with its story as I've said in this video the movie isn't out yet but this trailer is just not selling me on it you can say I'm being nitpicky with a few of these points and you're probably right but even in the old and awful trailers the previous films had they at least still looked visually consistent if there are six Kung Fu Panda movies planned out then I like to look at that plan because from what I see and from what a lot of others are seeing Kung from Panda 4 doesn't feel like a necessary installment or a longwa to return it feels like a surprise tacked onto a franchise that ended 7 years ago I have no doubt this will probably be an enjoyable and solid film but it doesn't feel like Kung Fu Panda at least not how I remember it and honestly even if it did take all of my boxes for an ideal kungu Panda movie I'd probably still be somewhat against it because I'm just not a fan of bringing back franchises years after they have ended I'm waiting on this movie to prove me wrong but as of now I'm not terribly excited for kungu panda 4 isn't necessary probably maybe no I'm leaning more towards no but if it does turn out to be a good followup I will be very happy that's the end of the video play yakaza I don't care and you're choking up because you could never sh well you're spitting cing up Al cuz you're smoking cigarettes and I'll B my lip and set the tong when the say we keep both P because you could Sho well you're spitting cing up alone cuz you're smoking cigarettes and I'll fight my

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Keywords: Kung Fu Panda, Kung Fu Panda 4, trailer, Dreamworks, animation, cartoon, Cartoonshi, TV, Film, entertainment, rant, criticism, video essay, critique, stop, looking, at, my, tags, memes, comedy, sequel, How to Train Your Dragon, Shrek, Trolls, Jack Black, Disney, Pixar, unnecessary, bad, unfunny, good, Puss in Boots, The Last Wish, SpiderVerse, style, Hype, disappointment, Tai Lung, The Chameleon, Awkwafina, Master Oogway, lol, lmao, cartoon community, commentary, news

Id: 724_obsb-bI

Length: 13min 38sec (818 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 16 2023